KOTOR: Unorthodox Methods
by Kotorchix
Summary: When Revan refuses to kill the gizka on the ship, Canderous decides to take matters into his own hands... but when Revan returns to the Ebon Hawk - alone - while the gizkas are in the process of spreading the poison, things rapidly go downhill.


_**Key:**_

_Cyar'ika - _Sweetheart

_Verd ori'shya beskar'gam._ - "A warrior is more than (his) armor" (Mandalorian proverb)

_Di'kut_ - a foolish, idiotic, useless individual

_Ni cuyi - _"I am a..."

Okay. This wasn't funny.

In fact, it was beyond funny.

It was beyond ridiculous.

If having gizkas on the ship wasn't bad enough, being mistaken for another gizka was the pits. And if you were mistaken for a gizka when gizka poison had been introduced into the gizka's diet wasn't bad enough, it was definitely time to evacuate ship once the gizkas started chasing you.

Ashley couldn't believe how bad she had it. She was holed up in the medical bay with the only sane gizka left on the ship. All the rest had been poisoned by Canderous.

She made a face as she recalled her day.

It had been early morning when Canderous had managed to convince everyone to get off the ship to go to a nice little cantina he had found somewhere in Anchorhead. Ashley had been following the rest when she suddenly realized she had forgotten her lightsaber.

She had gone back to the ship to collect it and had only made it to the main hold when she realized something was different. She had looked around the ship and had found no gizka. When she entered the med bay she encountered her first gizka. It was sitting rather happily on the medical bench, chewing on a strip of kolto-wrap.

Ashley had checked around the med bay until she had discovered that it was indeed the only gizka in the room. Sitting next to it on the bench, she had patted the gizka and it had cooed with appreciation... that was when she heard a very vicious sounding growl from the doorway.

She looked up and had found a yellowy-green gizka, its eyes red and green saliva drooling from its frog-like mouth. It had snarled and then roared in a very un-gizka-like way.

Then another five gizka showing similar symptoms as the first had crowded in the doorway, and one had leapt onto Ashley's leg, biting into and through her knee-high standard jedi boots.

Kicking the gizka out into the passage, Ashley had closed the med bay door as quickly as she could and had examined her leg.

She had no idea gizka had such sharp teeth.

Now she was applying kolto to her wound and trying to keep conscious. For some reason, all she could think about was food. She was starved... even though she had already managed to eat five food-bars which had been left in the med bay previously.

Five food-bars was five meals. Ashley's stomach groaned and her throat felt like it was been eaten by some bizarre turn of physical feats.

_"These gizka have got to go." Canderous said, growling at one of the small reptilian creatures which sniffed at his boots._

_The Ebon Hawk's crew were gathered around in the Main Hold, sorting through data pads, armor, weapons and other such things they had gathered since Taris, Dantooine, and Kashyyyk. _

_A gizka hopped up into Ashley's lap as she was removing memory chips from data pads, it smooched her hand and made a cricketing sound then hopped off her lap and started chewing on the muzzle of a blaster which was on the bench next to her._

_"They aren't that bad." Jolee grumbled. "Did I ever tell you about the time a friend of mine let kath hounds loose on a space station?"_

_"Yes, Jolee." Bastila replied from the corner where she was repairing her lightsaber. "Twice."_

_Jolee grumbled something about 'these young peoples' memories' and continued packing medpacs in a cargo cylinder._

_Canderous gave a gizka a hefty kick which sent it flying across the room to land on Carth's shoulder and sit there, wheezing in fright._

_Carth shivered and put it on the floor, pushing it gently away with his foot. The little creatures had freaked him out since they had made the Ebon Hawk their home. _

_Mission and Zalbaar were fixing some bowcastors together and were continuously shoving gizkas away from the bowcastors and the tools they were using. (Jolee had joked that they were attracted to shiny things.)_

_Juhani was looking rather distastefully at a gizka sitting on her foot. Whatever she did, the little creature would not get off. Canderous eventually kicked it off for her when she started complaining about it dribbling on her shoes._

_"Hey, go easy on them," Ashley said, "They're just the same as us, creatures without a purpose to live... so we all go and annoy each other with endless problems until we have something to live for." _

_Bastila raised an eyebrow at her. _

_"Well, I think I've cracked their reason to live," said Carth, "They live to be kicked by Canderous."_

_Ashley sighed. "Boys."_

_"I'm serious about having them go, Cyar'ika." Canderous said, glaring at Ashley. _

_Carth turned to Ashley, "Cyar'ika?" he asked, hoping for an interpretation of the mandalorian word._

_"It means sweetheart." Ashley replied, patting the gizka next to her. She looked up at Canderous and snarled something rather snappy-sounding in mandalorian._

_Raising his eyebrows, the Mandalorian smirked a little. "You're okay. Not too good at it, but... passable."_

_Ashley sighed. "Just don't use that poison on them."_

And he had done just that. He had used the poison on her little babies. And now her babies had bitten her... and now that she thought about it, she had no idea what the poison did except that it killed the gizka.

She had already figured that it made her ravishingly hungry and dizzy. Her leg hurt where the gizka had bitten it ... I get to die hungry and dizzy... wouldn't this be one for the records? Padawan Bastila Shan loses her own so-called padawan to... a gizka. How ironic.

Ashley looked at the only gizka in the room. It was now sleeping, head on her thigh and snoring gently. She absent-mindedly stroked its head, hoping that she wouldn't go insane like the other gizkas and go around biting everything that moved.

Canderous looked around as he entered the cantina. The other members of the crew were scattered around, seemingly looking for something.

Carefully approaching Onasi, he gave his shoulder a rough shove. "What's going on?"

The Republic soldier glanced at the mandalorian, "Um... we've sorta lost Ashley."

Canderous felt his hands go cold... "Ni cuyi di'kuit!" She couldn't have gone back to the ship, could she?

She tried her comlink to call for help, but discovered that her comlink was no longer in her pocket. Cursing her bad luck, Ashley carefully moved the gizka off her lap and limped to the door and listened. There were growls and the hideous sounds of fighting animals outside.

She sighed. Killed by a gizka. What a joke.

It wasn't that funny... but she knew that if she survived this and looked back on it in years to come, it would be very amusing. Canderous would like this.

She looked around the med bay for at least a stray vibroblade or blaster to defend herself with, but there wasn't anything of that description. She opened a few cabinets and compartments and discovered the Ebon Hawk's supply of medical tools.

As she wasn't a skilled doctor in any case, she had no idea what any of these things were supposed to do.

There was a strange thing which looked half like some necklace with a weird wire attached to some sorta stone-like thing on the end. There were some tweezers, some kolto-wrap, a few syringes, a strange little torch-like thingy, some space-tape, and many other things she couldn't identify.

She laid out all her findings on the medic bench next to the snoozing gizka. She hummed thoughtfully to herself as she looked at the strange contraptions.

How could you fight rabid gizkas with a medical kit?

"You've gotta be joking me!" Carth exclaimed, his eyes widening. "She's in there with some few dozen crazy gizka? With poison?"

Canderous and Carth were standing outside the Ebon Hawk, blasters drawn and medpacs ready. The rest of the crew were still at the cantina, oblivious to all the drama.

"Yeah, I guess I forgot to mention it to her." Canderous muttered gruffly. He definitely hadn't forgotten. He just hadn't wanted her to know. She was defending those little balls of scales like they were privileged members of the crew.

"It's possible she's already dead. The poison works quickly. Depends on her immune system." the mandalorian grumbled.

Carth looked remotely pained, then something changed in his expressions. It was... faith? Canderous had only seen it a couple of times, but it reminded him of the Mandalorian Wars and the courage the republicans had had when Revan won the first of many victories against the mandalorians.

"Verd ori'shya beskar'gam."

Canderous blinked in astonishment and looked at his companion. A warrior is more than his armor. Another thing he'd never known about Carth... he knew a bit of Mandalorian. "You believe so?"

Carth shrugged. "She proved it on Taris."

Nodding, Canderous stepped into the Ebon Hawk. Carth followed.

As the two soldiers entered, they were at a loss for words. All over the garage were rabid gizka, their legs stuck together with space tape and other gizkas wrapped totally in kolto wrap.

There was a cry of pain. Carth and Canderous raced through to the Main Hold... and there they were met by an astonishing sight.

Ashley was dressed in a black tank shirt, her jedi trousers, and was in the middle of a storm of rabid gizkas, hundreds of cuts and bites on her bare arms and neck. Her face was relatively protected by her robe which she had folded around her head to make a shemagh.

The thing that threw the two men was that she was a whirlwind of action, jabbing left and right, backwards and forwards with a syringe in one hand, and in the other she was using a stethoscope as a sling, knocking crazed gizkas away from herself. She didn't seem to have seen the soldiers yet.

A gizka zoomed over Canderous' shoulder, which jolted the two humans back to the real world. They aimed their blasters and started firing at the rabid reptiles.

Bastila sighed, wiping a hand over her brow. She had just run into her mother, Helena. Her father was dead... it couldn't be. But yet, it was. Now she felt inclined to tell her bond-mate of the new mission that had been proposed to her.

She wasn't sure if she actually wanted to do the mission. Finding her father's holodiary seemed fair enough, but giving it to her mother didn't seem to do the man any justice. It was probably on her mother's whim that her father had gone out into the Jundland Wastes in the first place. What was the bet that a holodisk had survived a krayt dragon's stomach, though?

She needed to talk to Ashley. Maybe she would talk with her before they headed into the desert, themselves.

As the last gizka fell to the ground, Ashley started swearing fluently in Basic, Huttese, Rodese, Twi'leki, Durese, and Mando'a. She grabbed Canderous by the front of his shirt and shook him violently, speaking and cursing at him, too rapidly to understand.

Carth thought Canderous deserved it. He needed a good shaking down. He rubbed his moustache with his hand to hide a grin. Poor Ashley.

Eventually, Ashley slowed down and started to appear to be exhausted. She hooked the stethoscope into her belt and flopped on a bench, soiled by crazed gizka drool and leaking kolto-wraps. The syringe slipped from her fingers and fell on the floor with a satisfying clank.

Carth put a hand on Ashley's shoulder and shook her slightly. "How bad are you bitten?" he asked, looking at her arms.

Ashley quickly hid her arms behind her back. "Not bad."

Canderous sighed, "Judging by the marks on your neck, you didn't get too lucky."

Ashley quickly pulled the shemagh down around her neck. "I'm fine."

"Come on, Ash." Carth said, "I know how stubborn you are about doctors and such, but it would be a wise idea considering all those bites." He held her arm, about to support her so she could stand up.

Ashley shoved his hand away. "I'm fine. It's not like I'm chasing you two around, growling and snapping, is it?" she spat, the whites of her eyes rapidly turning a strange pink-red color.

Carth took an involuntary step backwards, and Canderous raised an eyebrow. "Er... er... almost." Carth replied.

Ashley stood up, fists clenched. "I'm hungry."

Canderous and Carth looked at each other. Was that a hint of impending doom?

Sighing, Carth flicked his blaster to stun. "Sorry, Ash." he held the blaster up in her direction. "You've got to see a doctor or I'll have to stun you and drag you there."

Ashley growled, then stopped... she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and looked at the drool on it. "Agh! I'm turning gizka! Where's the doctor?"

She suddenly looked very distant. "I'm hungry... and dizzy." she flopped unconscious.

Canderous stepped forward just in time to catch her. He looked up at Carth with a half-grin. "She's a hard nut, alright."

Carth took her calves and lifted her with Canderous' help. "Told you so. I hope we aren't gonna have to baby her like she does with her gizkas after this, eh?"

"I sure hope not. It would probably be a lot cheaper to feed her, though." Canderous said. "Gizka food pellets are on special at Mic'tunan'jus Orgu's market stall at the moment."

_Fin._


End file.
